Mythical Beast

Phoenix · Firebird — Legendary bird reborn from flames

The Phoenix (Greek Phoinix, Latin Phoenix) is the immortal bird of ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman myth. At the end of a 500-year life (or, in alternative reckonings, the 1461-year Egyptian Great Year), it builds a nest of frankincense, cinnamon, and myrrh, sets itself alight upon it, and is reborn from its own ashes as a new young phoenix. The earliest Greek literary reference is in Herodotus, Histories II.73 (fifth century BCE), where the bird is associated with Heliopolis in Egypt; the bird's true root is the Egyptian Bennu, sacred to the sun god Ra at Heliopolis, a grey heron figured as the soul of Ra and the embodiment of the first light of creation. From Greco-Roman tradition the figure was taken up in 1 Clement 25, c. 96 CE, where the early Christian author cites the phoenix as a natural proof of the resurrection of Christ, and from there it became a standard image of Christian iconography. The Chinese fenghuang, Slavic Zhar-Ptitsa, and Persian Simurgh are distinct in origin but were later compared and conflated with the phoenix in nineteenth-century comparative mythology.

Pegasus · Winged Horse — A Legendary Creature from Greek Mythology

Pegasus (Greek Pegasos) is the winged horse of Greek myth, born from the blood of Medusa when Perseus severed her head and the blood mingled with the foam of the sea. His brother, born in the same moment, is the golden-sworded giant Chrysaor. Hesiod's Theogony 280-286 derives the name from Greek pege ('spring' or 'fountain'), where the foam from which Pegasus rose was conceived as a marine spring. The hero Bellerophon, given a golden bridle by Athena, tamed Pegasus at the spring of Peirene in Corinth and together they slew the Chimera, his most celebrated exploit. The spring of Hippocrene ('horse-spring') on Mount Helicon, sacred to the Muses, is said to have sprung where Pegasus struck the ground with his hoof, making him also the emblem of poetic inspiration. When Bellerophon, grown proud, tried to ride Pegasus up to Olympus, Zeus sent a gadfly that stung the horse and threw the hero, but Pegasus reached Olympus safely and became the bearer of Zeus's thunderbolts. He is fixed in the heavens as the constellation Pegasus.

Unicorn · Monoceros — Legendary Horse with a Sacred Horn

The Unicorn (Latin unicornis, from uni 'one' + cornu 'horn') is the legendary one-horned creature of medieval Europe, represented as a white horse with a single spiral horn in the middle of the forehead and a symbol of purity, chastity, and the sacred. Its etymological root reaches back to Ctesias' fifth-century BCE monoceros, but the unicorn proper crystallised when the Greek Septuagint rendered the Hebrew re'em (now identified as the aurochs) as monokeros and the Latin Vulgate of Saint Jerome rendered that, in turn, as unicornis. The Physiologus of the second to fourth centuries CE introduced the maiden-and-unicorn allegory: no hunter can take the unicorn by force, but a virgin alone in the forest will draw it to her, where it lays its head in her lap and falls asleep. This was theologised as the Incarnation, the unicorn being Christ entering the Virgin's womb. The Cloisters set of seven 'Hunt of the Unicorn' tapestries (Netherlands, 1495-1505) and the Cluny 'Lady with the Unicorn' set of six (c. 1500) are the iconographic peaks. The unicorn supports the Scottish side of the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom, and in twenty-first-century English it has become the standard term for billion-dollar startups.

Monoceros · Unicorn — Legendary one-horned creature

The Monoceros (Greek Monokeros, Latin Monoceros, 'single horn') is the archetype of the one-horned beast in Greek and Roman natural history. It first appears in the Indika of Ktesias of Knidos (fifth century BCE), a Greek physician at the Persian court who describes wild asses of India with white bodies, purple heads, blue eyes, and a single horn about one cubit long, banded in white, black, and crimson; cups carved from the horn make the drinker immune to poison, seizures, and epilepsy. In the first century CE, Pliny the Elder's Natural History VIII.31 standardised the description as 'a body like a horse, head like a stag, feet like an elephant, tail like a boar, and a single black horn about two cubits long in the middle of the forehead.' When this image reached medieval Europe through Latin sources it was equated with unicornus, the unicorn. In later fantasy, however, Monoceros often persists as a wilder, fiercer original distinct from the white-horse unicorn.

Valkyrie · Warrior Maidens — Choosers of the Slain in Norse Mythology

Valkyrie (Old Norse Valkyrja — 'chooser of the slain', English Valkyrie) is the female semi-divine being of Norse mythology — the decisive canon — who guides the souls of warriors to the war god Odin (Odin), derived from the Old Norse 'valr (the slain)' + 'kjósa (to choose)' meaning 'chooser of the slain (chooser of the slain)' — the decisive canonical vocabulary — the decisive canonical iconographic figure who decides who falls gloriously on the battlefield and guides the souls of dead heroes to the gods' hall Valhalla (Valhalla) to gather the army (Einherjar) for the final war of Ragnarok. Aliases — Valkyrja (Valkyrja), Walküre (Walküre, German), chooser of the slain, Odin's handmaid, Dísir (Dísir) — are the decisive canonical vocabulary. The decisive textual canon is the decisive origin canon of the Völuspá (Völuspá), Grímnismál (Grímnismál), and Helgakviða Hundingsbana (Helgakviða Hundingsbana) of the Poetic Edda (Poetic Edda) in the Codex Regius (Codex Regius) of c. 1270, and the decisive canon of Gylfaginning (Gylfaginning) Chapter 36 of the Prose Edda (Prose Edda) of Snorri Sturluson (Snorri Sturluson) of c. 1220.